During my time working as a chef I experienced quite a few different staff accommodations. I was lucky to enjoy some lovely places such as a nice cottage which I had to myself. The only neighbours were sheep in the adjoining field. I had my own room in a staff lodge although never experienced the benefit of a hotel room! The closest I came to this was an en-suite room in the staff block above the kitchen in which you could hear the kitchen extraction as soon as it went on at 7am, not ideal for a day off but handy for a breakfast shift.
I learnt the hard way how important it is to check out the staff accommodation before accepting a job. After taking a job in the lakes and told the accommodation was on site, to get down there and find out it was in a staff house in Windermere which wasn’t the problem. The problem was the single bed with coils springing through the mattress, broken bottles and windows downstairs, subsidence in the tiny room and mould in the bathroom! Safe to say I wasn’t there long after the manager informed me that he had never even been to the house before and wasn’t willing to resolve the problem.
When I was working up in the highlands, I had lots of good times spent in the staff lodge when the summer nights were long, and it was still light at 11.30 at night. We had BBQs and bonfires outside and you could see the deer in the field right next door. One of the many benefits of working the busy season in beautiful areas in rural Scotland.
What would you say is the one benefit of living in staff accommodation while working away from home?
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